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The effects of this are easiest to see with online recipes; the highest ranking recipes are all thousand word ramblings with a recipe tacked on at the end. Goog

The effects of this are easiest to see with online recipes; the highest ranking recipes are all thousand word ramblings with a recipe tacked on at the end. Google sees you spent more time on the site (i.e. wasted scrolling) and thinks you were more 'engaged.'

haroldp 8y ago
Wow, I hadn't made that connection! I just kept wondering why all recipe sites had devolved into fiendishly consistent kind of stupid.
magicalist 8y ago
> Google sees you spent more time on the site (i.e. wasted scrolling) and thinks you were more 'engaged.' That seems specious. By that reasoning we could predict long form articles would triumph over short ones, but that doesn't bear out. It seems just as plausible that there's a population of readers that do like those terrible rambling stories and tend to be more loyal to a site if they do, vs a large population who will just click on whatever recipes show up at the top of the search results with a reasonable sounding recipe name. Recipe sites also rip each other off all the time, and it would be difficult to tell where the authoritative source of a recipe was. The personal story part is harder to rip off without being caught as a scraper (and may then boost your SEO prospects).
- jackpirate 8y ago
  No one scrolls to the end of a long form article to get a recipe. Instead, they just close the tab and say "too long; didn't read." Your other point are good though.
  - RussianCow 8y ago
    > No one scrolls to the end of a long form article to get a recipe. I highly doubt this is true. Scrolling to the bottom of a page is a very low cost to pay for a recipe.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      That was an explanation of why long articles that don't have recipes at the end aren't consistently ranked higher than short articles that don't have recipes at the end.
      - RussianCow 8y ago
        Ah, I see how I completely misread that. Thanks for clarifying!
fancy_pantser 8y ago
I noticed this too and made a plugin that saves me a lot of time; it copies the recipe into a container and puts it in a modal at the top of the page with original formatting intact. Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlcdjbkdaegmljnnncfnhiioiadakae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlc... Source: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter Video demo & explanation: https://youtu.be/3Xq1p10f3v4 https://youtu.be/3Xq1p10f3v4
- GunlogAlm 8y ago
  This is awesome and will save me a lot of time. Thanks!
dawnerd 8y ago
You don't care about how that cookie recipe that only uses four ingredients changed their whole live and how their children just love it and the whole office goes nuts when they bring them in? Yeah I don't either, I just wanna know how to make the damn cookie.

haroldp 8y ago

Wow, I hadn't made that connection! I just kept wondering why all recipe sites had devolved into fiendishly consistent kind of stupid.

magicalist 8y ago

> Google sees you spent more time on the site (i.e. wasted scrolling) and thinks you were more 'engaged.' That seems specious. By that reasoning we could predict long form articles would triumph over short ones, but that doesn't bear out. It seems just as plausible that there's a population of readers that do like those terrible rambling stories and tend to be more loyal to a site if they do, vs a large population who will just click on whatever recipes show up at the top of the search results with a reasonable sounding recipe name. Recipe sites also rip each other off all the time, and it would be difficult to tell where the authoritative source of a recipe was. The personal story part is harder to rip off without being caught as a scraper (and may then boost your SEO prospects).

jackpirate 8y ago
No one scrolls to the end of a long form article to get a recipe. Instead, they just close the tab and say "too long; didn't read." Your other point are good though.
- RussianCow 8y ago
  > No one scrolls to the end of a long form article to get a recipe. I highly doubt this is true. Scrolling to the bottom of a page is a very low cost to pay for a recipe.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    That was an explanation of why long articles that don't have recipes at the end aren't consistently ranked higher than short articles that don't have recipes at the end.
    - RussianCow 8y ago
      Ah, I see how I completely misread that. Thanks for clarifying!

fancy_pantser 8y ago

I noticed this too and made a plugin that saves me a lot of time; it copies the recipe into a container and puts it in a modal at the top of the page with original formatting intact. Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlcdjbkdaegmljnnncfnhiioiadakae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlc... Source: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter Video demo & explanation: https://youtu.be/3Xq1p10f3v4 https://youtu.be/3Xq1p10f3v4

GunlogAlm 8y ago
This is awesome and will save me a lot of time. Thanks!

dawnerd 8y ago

You don't care about how that cookie recipe that only uses four ingredients changed their whole live and how their children just love it and the whole office goes nuts when they bring them in? Yeah I don't either, I just wanna know how to make the damn cookie.